One day

Last night I finally got around to watching Midnight in Paris. While I absolutely loved the portrait Woody Allen painted of Paris (god I love that city), it also got me to thinking (a sign of a very good film indeed). There’s a point near the end of the film where Owen Wilson’s character realizes that everyone is trying to escape their present to live in some elusive “Golden Age” they see in the past. Because, as Adriana says, the present is…”dull.”

And I would have to tend to agree. But while I love a good time-travel plotline as much as the next girl and deeply envy the fashion sensibilities of the 1950s, I realize that I have a tendency to look forward in time, rather than back, when searching for my Golden Age. What I mean is, oftentimes instead of dealing with my present, I concoct elaborate schemes and fantasies about what my life could and would look, feel and be like in my more exciting, fulfilling, happier future.

“That’s what the present is…it’s a little unsatisfying because life’s a little unsatisfying.” – Midnight in Paris

So instead of living in the moment, I have acquired a mental list of “one days.” And it goes a little something like this.

One day I’ll…

Live in San Francisco.

Finally write my novel.

Meet someone who brings flowers and sunshine into my life and then fall madly, completely and blissfully in love.

Explore the temples of South East Asia.

Live in a home that has hardwood floors, a window seat, claw-footed bathtub and an authentic secret passageway.

Own a ridiculously fabulous pair of Jimmy Choos.

Ride a horse side-saddle.

Go to the Kentucky Derby.

Plant an herb garden.

Learn how to grout tile.

While these are all great things in theory, I can only wonder if I’d enjoy and appreciate them as much if they were todays rather than one days. I hope I would, but I guess that’s just the perverse nature of this thing we call the present.

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Credit where credit is due….
San Francisco Image: Fodor’s
Angkor Wat Image: Just the Planet
Shoe Image: Jimmy Choo

The Secrets of Scent-uality

I was browsing through Etsy yesterday (one of my favorite work-avoidance techniques), and I found a shop that sells some very unique candles. Not only does it have votives that smell like ocean mist, melting ice and clean laundry, but it also boasts a selection of what I can only think of as mandles – scents like beer, bacon, pizza, nachos and of all things, dirt.

This got me thinking. Perhaps I’m going about this whole ‘being single’ thing the wrong way. I mean, they say you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, so it would stand to reason that you could catch more men with bacon than with, let’s say, hibiscus.

I figured there had to be some sort of scientific evidence to help me out. So I did what I do best and hopped onto Google. And it turns out that there are smells that have been shown to increase arousal in men.

According to a study carried out in the late ’90s by Dr. Alan Hirsch, director of the Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation in Chicago, smelling a combination of pumpkin pie and lavender causes the greatest increase in arousal – more than any fancy perfume. Other stimulating smells were cinnamon buns, doughnuts, black licorice, buttered popcorn, cola and cheese pizza. Begging the question – are men really turned on by these scents or are they just hungry?

Experts contend that it’s not the smells themselves that titillate the senses but instead they are tapping in to the good feelings linked to specific memories. This isn’t surprising since our sense of smell is directly connected to the part of the brain responsible for emotions and memory. In fact, it’s often cited that smells affect 75% of our daily emotions!

All I can say is, I just hope I don’t meet someone who has an emotional attachment to lutefisk … or papayas for that matter.

In the In-Between

I’ve had that feeling in the pit of my stomach lately, the one that’s part excitement, part sheer terror. Exactly like what you feel as your car clicky-clacks its way up the first hill on a roller coaster. The sense of anticipation that something is going to happen very soon and anxiety over what exactly that might be. The restless feeling as you draw closer to the top because you are sick wondering when the slow, steady climb is going to end, and you just want to feel the exhilaration of the fall and the momentum that will carry you through the rest of the ride. But there you are, still click, click, clicking closer and closer to the top … knowing the drop is inevitable but unable to see exactly when it will come.

This is what I call the “in-between.”

Others of a more scholarly nature call it “liminality” (coming from the Greek word for threshold – limnos).

“Between-ness is a defining characteristic of liminal. Limbo is another. Liminal is neither here nor there but exists between one moment and the next, poised in that pause where what’s passing hasn’t yet become what’s becoming. Liminal is a magical time, a dangerous time, fraught with possibility…and peril.” – Karen Marie Moning, Faefever.

William Bridges has written extensively on the subject of transitions and is the go-to guy for expert information about all things liminal. According to his book (aptly titled Transitions), there are three phases comprising the internal process we go through after a major life change: 1. the ending, 2. the “neutral zone” and 3. the new beginning.

It is during the “neutral zone” that we go off into the wilderness to try to make sense of it all; to regroup and rebuild. While for many people this leads to heightened intuition, personal insight and growth, and almost “spiritual” awakenings, others try to grab hold of something – anything – to free themselves from the ambiguity of the in-between.

According to Bridges, “One of the difficulties of being in transition in the modern world is that we have lost our appreciation for this gap in the continuity of existence. For us, ’emptiness’ represents only the absence of something…[so] we try to find ways of replacing these missing elements as quickly as possible.”

However, as Moning had her heroine point out in the earlier quote, this is a magical time full of possibilities. When taken in that light, the liminal is a lot like the thought experiment made famous by Erwin Schrödinger (and The Big Bang Theory) – it isn’t until we open the box that we know whether the cat is dead or alive. So in many ways, during this in-between time (in my personal case) I both get my dream job and move to my dream city. I can have it all. So why then are we all so consumed with opening the box?

I think it’s because even though this is a time of infinite possibilities. A time to reinvent ourselves. A time of creativity. It is also a purgatory of potential. Because no matter how great and wonderful potential and possibilities are, they are just dreams, ghostly images of a future we could have, that exist only until we cement something into reality.

So while anything is possible in the in-between, it is up to us to use this time to figure out what it is we want to make real.

A Pandora State of Mind

I have to admit that over the last few months I’ve become increasingly addicted to Pandora. After nearly three years of nothing but non-stop cumbia and reggaeton, I felt I had been cast adrift from the indie scene I once inhabited. So not only has Pandora served as my reintroduction into the world of popular music, but some days I swear it can read my mind/moods and provide me with the perfect musical expression of my thoughts/feelings. (Generally with a song I’ve never heard before and have never heard again.)

Case in point, yesterday after having had an in-depth conversation the night before about the nature of love and heartbreak, Pandora provided me with Everybody by Ingrid Michaelson, which became my unofficial theme song for the day.

Who knows what else Pandora will pick for the soundtrack of my life. I’ll keep you posted.

“Happy is the heart that still feels pain
Darkness drains and light will come again
Swing open up your chest and let it in
Just let the love, love, love begin”

Welcome!

Lots of ideas are percolating at the moment so I’ll be serving up some freshly brewed posts very, very soon. Thanks for your patience!